Tag: vegetarian

If you’ve not read What Did You Eat Yesterday, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a combination of a slice of life manga about a gay couple (a lawyer and a hairstylist) in Tokyo and their day to day life, and a cooking manga, with detailed instructions on how to make the dishes that the main characters try. And it’s just a quiet, domestic manga, and sweet as fuck besides.

My boything’s been wanting to learn how to cook better, and I’ve been wanting to try some recipes from this manga, so this recipe from Volume 12 seemed like the perfect intersection of our needs. This is a simple, cheap, low effort, and easy meal to make; just slice up some sweet potato, throw it in with some rice, sake, and salt in the rice cooker, and just let it cook, and boom, you’ve got a good, hearty dish, and the rice cooker can keep it warm for as long as you want. It is a bit bland, so I would recommend adding some soy sauce (or ponzu went real well with the bowl I just had for lunch). Also, we used Murasaki sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s for this for a change of pace, would definitely recommend them.

Rinse your rice (I did it for the first time with this, I’m going to try to get some better instructions on this later), and then add your rice and water in recommended portions per the instructions on your bag of rice to your rice cooker. (If you’re like me, you have one of those big ass 10 lb bags, because you go through a lot of rice in the space of a year, and you have several Asian markets near you, which means it’s significantly cheaper.)

Meanwhile, take your sweet potato, rinse it thoroughly, and then half it width and length wise, and cut into .5 in fan shapes (see pic 4). As you get closer to finishing the sweet potato, add the sea salt and sake to the rice cooker. Once the sweet potato is fully cut up, add the pieces to the rice cooker, and then cook on the normal settings for white rice (usually about an hour).

Looking for an interesting, healthy snack? Like salt and vinegar flavored potato chips? Ever wondered what this tastes like when applied to edamame? Well, then I’ve got a hell of an interesting, simple snack recipe for you!

Preheat the oven to 375. In a medium bowl, place your thawed edamame, add the rice vinegar, sea salt, and black pepper, and stir to combine. Let it sit for about 5 to 10 minutes (pic 1). Line a baking sheet, and place the edamame on the lined sheet in a single layer, trying not to pour the leftover vinegar onto the sheet (pic 2 – a little will end up on the sheet, nonetheless).

Roast for 30 mins, toss gently, and then roast for another 10 minutes (see pic 3 for what they will look like at the end). Let them cool for 10 minutes, and then enjoy! Ideally with some water to keep you hydrated.

This is a pretty straight forward, budget friendly soup. Not my favorite I’ve ever had from the site it’s originally from, but solid enough. The spices on this are super light, and I would recommend experimenting with them significantly. As is, this didn’t make too much of an impression on me.

Heat your olive oil over medium heat, and add the diced onion, minced garlic, and grated ginger. To make it as easy as possible to grate the ginger (and what I’ve found gets the best flavor in recipes) is to freeze the whole root, and whenever you need it, take it out and grate it straight into the pot. Still fresh (even though the root’s been frozen, the grated ginger will warm up in the cooking process), and has even made recipes taste better. Saute until the onion is soft and transparent.

Then, add the pumpkin, lentils, veggie stock, and curry powder. Stir to combine, cover with a lid, and bring the heat to medium-high to bring the soup to a boil. Once it’s boiling, reduce the heat to low and bring the soup down to a simmer, and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring here and there. After 20 minutes, the lentils should be soft, and the soup should have thickened a bit.

Taste it and add sea salt and more curry powder to your personal taste, and enjoy!

Happily, kind of, I am currently so far behind on this blog that this has now completed the loop to this being back in season! Go me!

Egg nog. Dutch babies. This is pretty much an A+ combination on all fronts, especially as the cold finally starts to settle in over Chicago. So make this this weekend, and treat yourself. You’ve earned it.

Preheat your oven to 400, place the butter in the cast iron skillet, and place the skillet in the oven to melt the butter (see what pic 3 looks like for what this will look like after the oven has preheated).

Combine all other ingredients in the blender (pic 1), and blend until combined (pic 2). Once the oven has preheated, swirl the skillet to coat it in butter, and then pour the batter into the hot skillet (pic 4).

Place back into the oven, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden and puffed (pic 5), and then om nom it!

This is one of those absurdly simple, “how in the hell did I not think of this thing sooner??” breakfasts. And yet, it took me stumbling across a photo of this somewhere for doing this to cross my mind.

I’m not kidding how simple this is. Take bagel. Put larger hole in bagel if necessary. Crack egg in bagel. Fry. Enjoy egg and bagel.

Take a pan and melt half the butter in it. Take a bagel half, and, if you don’t think the hole’s big enough, make it a little bigger, enough so that an egg yolk can fit in the center. Place the bagel inside down in the skillet, crack the egg into the yolk, season with salt and pepper. Cover the pan, and cook until the egg yolk is done to your liking.

Even though I haven’t used it as much as I would like to this year, this waffle iron is one of the best things that has happened to me, in terms of weekend breakfasts. Especially with these waffles. These babies are thick, so the batter will require some thinning, and a heavy dose of butter applied to the iron to make sure it doesn’t stick, but trust me, they’re wonderful.

Whisk the dry ingredients (flour through baking powder) together in a large bowl, make a well in the center, and add the wet ingredients (veggie oil through almond extract), stirring together until just combined. Fold the frozen cherries into the batter.

Using the melted butter on the iron to make sure the waffle doesn’t stick, make your waffles according to waffle iron instructions, and enjoy! If the batter seems a bit thick, don’t be afraid to thin it out slightly with more buttermilk.

So, I’ve been saying I would finally catch the hell up on this blog. This is me finally committing, entirely too late in the year for my liking. I’ve mostly been sticking to stuff I know this year, with the occasional new recipe here and there, and getting back into the swing of cooking in general, and finally getting my depression and anxiety under control (meds are great, kids, as is therapy). This is me catching up on my recipe backlog.

I’ve only made these once, and that’s a damn shame, because come on – browned butter AND chai spices AND pumpkin? This is the perfect fucking fall waffle.

In a small pot/pan, melt the butter over low heat (pic 1). Continue cooking the butter until it turns amber and starts to smell nutty and get little brown flakes at the bottom (pic 2 is the end result of this). Pour into a separate small bowl to stop cooking, and let cool.

While the browned butter cools, whisk together your dry ingredients (everything from flour down to ginger). In a separate small bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (the browned butter, and everything from the eggs down to the canned pumpkin). Then, pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold together until the batter just barely comes together (pics 3-4).

Heat up your waffle iron, and make the waffles according to the waffle iron’s instructions, and enjoy!

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Hey kids! So, updates on this will be at best incredibly sporadic (as I cook new stuff, and remembering to actually write up stuff). I try to be as straightforward as I can in describing my process and steps.